WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1271 - Jane Goodall

Episode Date: October 18, 2021

Jane Goodall has hope. Yes, even in these times. That doesn't mean the good doctor looks at the world with rose-colored glasses. It means she knows hope is a necessary part of our survival as a species. Marc talks with Dr. Goodall about The Book of Hope: A Survival Guide for Trying Times and finds out what inspires her these days. They also talk about her famous primate research that changed the way we humans understand ourselves, her work to spread environmental equity, and her thoughts on Bigfoot. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Got the, sounds like a fucked up tweeter in there. But I'm doing all the right things according to the doc. How it going with you i just wanted i just want to put that out there i know i've been complaining about it it's a real problem and uh i'm on a course of uh an attempt to troubleshoot and treat the fucking thing so please don't don't uh don't dm me about. Don't email me about Mark Ruffalo brain cancer. Don't like, oh, we'll see. All right. I don't need the extra panic from you. Shut ins.

All right. I'm trying to do more than just sit in my house and fester about my goddamn health. I will. I will take the proper course of action if panic is necessary. Am I coming in a little hot? I apologize. I apologize.

Everything's okay. I'm just dealing with the ear thing. It's very annoying. And I'm getting ready to play music tomorrow night. Tomorrow night at Largo. I don't know if there's tickets left. Getting the words in my head, doing the songs, playing the guitar, figuring out the sounds. Why am I doing it? I've been

thinking about that. Today on the show, I talked to Jane Goodall. That's exciting, right? I mean, she's a saint. I mean, the idea to have her on came from this new book. It's a book. It's called The Book of Hope, A Survival Guide for Trying Times. It's basically this dialogue between her and Douglas Adams. And when I first saw the book and the pitch to maybe have her on, I'm like, man, am I going to be the guy that tries to talk Jane Goodall out of her hope? Am I going to be that guy? Turns out the whole book is sort of that way. Douglas doesn't try to talk her out of it, but he's sort of a devil's advocate. And it's interesting because she has answers for everything. She's been through a lot. And I read the book. I don't know if I'm just cynical. I don't know if I'm realistic. I don't know if I'm objective. I don't know if I'm a fatalist. I'm not a nihilist. But I don't generally think I have hope. But hope, the way she frames it, is different a struggle. And generally people who are getting through life without falling into themselves or being evil

or doing something shitty to themselves probably has some hope, whether you want to identify it as such or not. And active hope and hope that you can act on is it's good and it's possible and it's real and the thing is i think many of us get into these sort of big expectation game we get bowled over by the seeming uh powerlessness that we feel in the face of the monsters that exist right now monsters we've created and monsters that live next to us. And I understand that. There is futility involved.

And what does it feel like? What does fascism feel like? What does environmental catastrophe feel like? What does impending chaos and social crisis feel like? It feels like, well, I don't know what to do with it. I'm tired. What's on Netflix? What's some sort of nostalgia vessel I can hop into? And all this cultural dialogue around people looking to comedians for leadership and ways of thinking is really ridiculous. Because there's this idea that you've got to be controversial. Well, whatever controversy is defined as right now, it's pretty hacky. It's basically pushing back unnecessarily on people who are already struggling or ideas that are fairly commonly accepted as socially good

or good for the health of the nation. The real courage or the real hope or the real move forward is to embrace the situation we're in. Embrace the vulnerability and the sort of fragility of the democratic system, of the environment, of minorities' ability to live in this country and feel like they can honor themselves. I mean, that's courageous. Why not embrace that as opposed to,

duh, fuck you, man. Fuck you. Everybody is free to speak their mind, and they should be, to speak their truth, even if it's based in fear or ignorance or just belligerence. But truth be told, in the world of no voices and in the world of the fragile and vulnerable minorities, there are people whose truths, who they want to live them, have to take tremendous risks and sacrifices

and make decisions relative to how they look, how they feel in themselves, what they present themselves out in the world. And some of them are attacked or made to feel less than or diminished or uncomfortable just walking out of their fucking house. That's the courage to live truth. There's a big difference between the courage to live your truth and the courage to speak your truth.

Nobody is taking away the freedom to speak your truth. Nobody is taking away the freedom to speak your truth. But a lot of times the people that are speaking that truth, that controversial truth, are diminishing the ability for people to live their truth. I had some shelves made for my office. Went to get some plywood cut. Presented a problem. But you know what?

It's a bad transition. Is it though? I went and saw The Last Duel. I saw it last week. I don't even know if I mentioned it. But it was one of those movies where at the beginning I was like, oh man, I don't really like medieval stuff. And then by the middle I'm like, holy shit, what the fuck is happening? And by the end, oh my God,

this might be a great fucking movie. I highly recommend that movie. It's totally relevant. It's a fairly honest and interesting assessment of the toxic male gaze. It's kind of a amazing movie on a directorial level, on a writing level, and on an acting level. And it's totally relevant.

It's not just a medieval romp through rape. So, heavy shit. Grown-up movie. Right up there with the best of my best for grown-up movie watching. So, I highly recommend that. I also want to recommend, again, Reservation Dogs, the Sterling Harjo show.

I watched all eight episodes finally. A lot of heart. A lot of fucking heart. A lot of hope. A lot of vulnerability. A lot of human shit going on there. It's what it's about. All we should be talking about. The only controversy

is how the fuck can people not come together to fight the goddamn climate problem? Because look, man, I know you're all going to adapt. I know you're all going to adapt. But is that the future you want? Hey, you know, 130 is not that bad once you get out in it. Not that bad. You just can't stay out more than the allotted time. Jesus, you get thirsty.

Holy fuck. I stayed out for 43 minutes. I almost died. Didn't make it back to my house. I don't know those people that bought property out in Joshua Tree. Good luck. 140 this weekend. A couple of people actually died in their Airstream sitting on their property.

It's like a convection oven. Just roasted little hipsters with their selvedge pants on and their West Coast boots. It was sad, though. The dog died, too. You know, the one with the bandana around his neck? Yeah, that's right, Bo.

They all got roasty toasty. Good investment, that Joshua Tree property. Anyway, listen, Jane Goodall, the book is called The Book of hope a survival guide to trying times by jane goodall and douglas abrams the national geographic documentary about her life jane is streaming on disney plus it's directed by brett morgan and i watched that movie and that really got me into getting a sense of her fully and we talk about how her life and the study of the chimps were depicted in that movie.

And there's also some talk about Louis Leakey, who was the anthropologist that brought Jane on board to work with him. And that's where her initial research into the ape communities began. And it was interesting. There's two points in the documentary that I talked to her about

that actually struck me emotionally, but actually were manipulated. It was a very beautiful talk with a very, you know, humbly powerful woman who's been through a lot and has maintained her focus on what is important for humans and for the planet. And it was an honor to talk to her. This is me talking to Jane Goodall. Are you self-employed?

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I was looking at my paper thinking, how do I say this? Good all. Good all. Just like all good, you know? Yes, of course. All good. None of us are all good, Jane. None of us are all good. We all have a bit of old Nick in us.

Yes. I'm not sure what that is, but I believe you. Satan, the devil. Yeah. Some more than others, I think. Some are almost entirely. I'm afraid there's not much good in some people. Yeah. What do we do about these people? Because they seem to get leadership positions and convince a lot of other people that it's a good way to be. They seem to get leadership positions and convince a lot of other people that it's a good way to be. It's horrible. I want to send them all off. They're all climate deniers.

So I'd like to send them all off and put them on one of the bits of the ice that hasn't melted in the Antarctic and leave them there. Yeah. Save the polar bears. Float those guys out. Yeah. Save the polar bears, float those guys out. Yeah. So, Jane, I've read almost all of the book and I saved the ending because I somehow got it in my head that maybe you have a quick fix at the end that's going to be the surprise ending. Okay. But it's not true, is it? No.

I'm not talking about sending off the bad people to an iceberg. Oh, well, I wish we could. Can I ask you something just in your own, because something I deal with every day. Do you have any ideas why so many people believe the people that are clearly evil and clearly lying and clearly manipulative. Do you have anything in your experience in research? Yes, I do. I think, you know, having lived through World War II and read a lot about it, I think that when Hitler and Goebbels, they both said, if you say a lie often enough, people will believe it. And the fake news, the lies that have given out again and again and again and again to people who have rather deliberately been kept undereducated so they can be controlled. Yes. I can't think of any other reason. of any other reason. Yeah, and it's so, it's disturbing at this point in, you know, globally that, you know, fascism is a very relevant and real threat to the survival of the species and just to, you know, people in general in terms of tribalism, right? It's terrible. I mean, you know, democracy seems to be crumbling everywhere. And, you know, think of what's happening in some countries around the world.

I often think about, you know, some of the stuff that you talked about in the book in that, and also with the original crew of chimpanzees, is that, you know, it's just something can happen to animals overnight and they'll kill their neighbors. Yeah. And it happens. And it's like it's terrifying to me because we think like you're in England, I assume. I'm in America. And there's part of you that wants to believe that it cannot happen. But it happens everywhere.

Yeah, it happens everywhere. So you write this book or this series of interviews with Douglas Abrams about hope. And I don't think I quite understood the definition of hope before I read it because I don't see myself as a hopeful person. But you sort of frame it as not, it's not like faith. Hope is something that is connected to will, that something that exists whether or not you feel good or not. Yes, absolutely. And, you know, the other day I thought of, I think, rather a good way of describing it. First of all, I was told that I shouldn't spend so much time at the beginning of the book talking about all the things that have gone wrong.

And I said, if I don't do that, people will say, oh, Jane's just looking at the world through rose-colored spectacles. She doesn't understand. Well, I do. I understand very, very well. And so as we definitely are living through pretty dark times, I suddenly thought, you know, it's as though we're in a great big dark tunnel and there's all these obstacles and pitfalls and things which seem impossible to surmount or to cross. But right at the end of that tunnel is a little pinprick of light. And that's the hope that we are working to reach.

Oh, just a pinprick. It's it's. Yeah, I don't uh i i i want to believe that and i always have sort of believed it but uh like i some part of me thinks we're out of the tunnel and this is sort of where we're at and it's going to be some variation of this for however long it goes on for. You know, that the human spirit, though we may think it's good, it takes a certain amount of tolerance and effort to nurture that good. Well, yes and no. I don't know about that. It's extraordinary the number of people who have this indomitable spirit.

And I don't know where it came from. Yes. I was talking to somebody yesterday and he was on his bicycle and a car hit him and he became paraplegic from here down. And he can move his arms just but he can't move his fingers. He can't move his legs. arms just but he can't move his fingers he can't move his legs and he just had he told everybody to help him celebrate the anniversary of his accident and people said but how can you celebrate that and he said well everybody tells me the first year is the worst and then gradually you learn to come to terms

with it if you don't go under. And you have physiotherapy. And, you know, maybe some amazing new neurological magic will happen because medicine is coming up with extraordinary things all the time. And so I spoke to him yesterday. And it was just like, you know, those are the kind of people that you speak with. And you realize that even if the world failed, we won't. We've got this incredible, indomitable spirit. And there's something there that is very, very precious and worth fighting for.

I know I agree with you, but don't you also think that, and I'm not here just to argue with you. I mean, it seems like the book, even Douglas Abrams in his polite way was trying to argue you out of your hope. That was, it seemed. Devil's advocate, he said. Devil's advocate, right. But like alongside of the indomitable spirit is our ability to adapt, which you know quite well from your research. And my fear is that, you know, a year or so from now, people are going to be saying, well, you know, 130 is not that hot. I don't think so. I really don't think so. I think we've reached a crossroads that many people understand. And, you know, don't take this wrong, but for a very long time, the wealthy nations were sort of saying, oh, well, climate change is something, you know, it's affecting Bangladesh and India and places like that. It doesn't affect us.

Now, that's changed. Think of Hurricane Ida. Think of what happened in New York, unprecedented flooding. Think of the fires that are destroying the West Coast. I'm in the West Coast. We're on fire right now. But to speak to my point, now people sort of refer to it as fire season. Now, I know that what you're saying is correct, and there is an awareness of it. But there is something about the human spirit that also has a sort of gallows humor about what's happening, which I don't think is necessarily good.

I have it myself, but I think it leads to inaction. Humor is good to get you through. And, you know, I was going to say there's also this terrible flooding in Europe. So Europe is very complacent. They're not anymore. I say I have fear for these big, these big conferences. It's usually just a lot of talk and promises, but with no teeth to them. That's what we're all praying won't be the case. We're hoping enough people have truly understood.

I mean, think what's happening to the economy. I don't know. It's terrible, isn't it? I mean, think what's happening to the economy. I don't know. It's terrible, isn't it? Yeah, it's all terrible. Every day is terrible. It takes a lot to get through a day without, you know, with any sort of easiness. There's an uneasiness.

And it's, you know, obviously it's real. And I guess it's necessary in order to get people to change. I think so. I think you don't spend enough time around young people like I do, even though it's on Zoom now. Because this youth program of ours, you know, when you get to 12 upwards, university, young people, they are so passionate. They're so dedicated. They're so enthusiastic. And they're so determined, you know. And it really is inspiring.

I need to be inspired all the time. You can't help but be, you know, in despair when you look at some of them. I mean, look at Afghanistan. Yeah. That's horrible. The people that are living there, the women, the people that were trying to move progressively forward. And, you know, that's but I think we there's no point my dwelling on something I can literally do nothing about. Right. I can't do anything about

Afghanistan. Right. But there are other things that I know people can link people together. Yeah. And you seem to do a lot of that work when you think about your own indomitable spirit. When you look back at your life, at your childhood, do you know, you know, where you shifted into this sort of focused, patient person that is required to sit and study apes for decades? that is required to sit and study apes for decades? I think I always was in a way. I mean, you know, there was no television when I grew up. It was books and nature. So very early on, I learned the patience because you can't get close to animals unless you're patient.

You know, you can't just walk up to them. So I learned patience. I had an amazing mother. I learned a lot from my dog. I was always, I guess I'm born determined. What about where was your father? He joined the war. I was five when war broke out. He went into the Royal Engineers. And then at the end of the war, my parents divorced. So I didn't really know my father, but he gave me good, strong genes. Yes.

Which enabled me to stay healthy, you know. But you didn't have any relationship with him, huh? Well, yes, a bit, because mom was very wise. And so when I was working in London, he had a flat there. And she suggested that I shared his flat. Didn't see much of him. He was delivering after the war. He was like a lost fish. And he had a job delivering jaguars all over Europe, even beyond the Iron Curtain. The car?

The car, yes. No, not animals. curtain. The car? The car, yes. No, not animals. I thought like, well, that... I thought maybe we found the missing link to your animal interest was your dad was running wildcats all around the world. No, he wasn't. So I got to know him fairly well, and he was always very proud and this, that, and the well. And, you know, he was always very proud and this, that and the other. Yeah.

Do you think that, you know, in some way, I mean, and obviously, you know, you've thought a lot about your story and your history. Do you think that in some way his absence maybe compelled you even more to be focused and to make up for that? No, I don't think so. No? I mean, I was only five when he wasn't there, so he was never really there. And before that, he was always off with his motor racing buddies. I never really knew him, so I never really missed him. Right. And what about, do you think that your relationship with Dr. Leakey was sort of like a guide to you? Well, Leakey had faith in me.

And you know how amazing that he actually wanted, A, a woman, because he felt that we might be more patient. And B, he was so thrilled I had not been to university because he wanted a mind uncluttered by the reductionist thinking of ethology at the time. But did you, like, where was his research added? Because, I mean, you changed the entire paradigm for how humans see themselves. And, you know, there was significant pushback against your ideas at the time. Where was Leakey's research at the time where you just started doing the work that you started doing for him, which was almost secretarial? you know, doing the work that you started doing for him, which was almost secretarial. But where was where was was he in a did was he was he hitting a wall with his research at the time that you joined up with him? Well, he was finding it hard to get funds. But no, because his his,

you know, he was looking for fossilized remains of early humans. And he was still doing that. He was being feted in the US. And he was still doing his annual digs for three months every year in Olduvai on the Serengeti. And he took me there with his wife, one other young girl, and a few Kenyans. And that's where he decided I was the person he'd been looking for. He says for 10 years, looking for the right person to go and learn about chimps because he believed in a common ancestor, an ape-like, human-like creature, six million years ago or so. And so he reasoned if James sees behavior in chimps today that's similar or the same as that in humans today, maybe that behavior

was in the common ancestor. And we brought it with us in our separate evolutionary pathways. And that would give him a better way of guessing how the creatures whose bones he was looking at might have behaved, because of course, behavior doesn't fossilize. was looking at might have behaved because of course behavior doesn't fossilize right so he decided for whatever reason because of you know your will and determination that you would go sitting in in the jungle and and watch apes for as long as it took yes uh he i thought i didn't think it would be more than three years. He thought then he was right. Well, he hadn't thought long enough. But it was that old of I was the way I reacted when Julian and I,

one evening we met a rhino, another evening a young male lion. And I think it was around the campfire after the lion episode that Leake decided i was i was ripe for what he wanted that's when he began talking about this group of chimps on a lake shore and after a bit i said oh louis i wish you wouldn't talk about that job because that's what i want to do and he said why do you think i'm talking to you about it obviously it takes a special uh a person to do what you did but were you relieved to be away from the industrial world were you did you find that uh you were did you have any sort of ill feelings about the industrial world was it was this like just did it fit your personality to

be like well i i don't want to be around people anyways. No, I've never been against being around the right people. Yes. And, you know, I didn't have much to do with the industrialized world. You have to realize that back then, environmentalism hadn't really been invented, the word. We didn't talk about the environment. Nobody was talking about the possibility of climate change or species extinction. So a much cleaner, greener world, at least as we saw it. In fact, there was horrible things going on, but nobody talked about them. What were the horrible things going on when

you started, like in 1960? What did you see that raised your concern? Nothing, no. There was nothing raising my concern. I mean, when I got to Gombe, it was part of this great equatorial forest belt that stretched right across Africa. Yeah. You know, my mother came with me for four months because the authorities wouldn't let me be alone. And we drove from Nairobi and we drove through, you know, woodland, woodland, woodland, woodland, all the way. Now, woods have gone.

So, you know, it wasn't until 1986 that the horror of what was happening really hit me. Because I was buried in my little world of Gombe with the students and the chimps. And when I left, I either came back here or I was doing my PhD at Cambridge. And so I wasn't reading stuff about what was going on. But when I had this conference in 1986 and realized that right across Africa, chimp numbers were dropping and forests were going, and then I decided I had to go and find out for myself. Got a bit of money, visited six range countries, learned a lot about chimps,

but also learned about the plight of so many African people living in and around chimp habitat. You know, came to a head when I flew over Gombe. The forest was gone. chimp habitat, you know, came to a head when I flew over Gombe. The forest was gone. It was just a little national park, like an island of forest, and all around were the bare hills. You know, that's when it hit me. If we don't help these people find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, because they're cutting down the trees to get land to grow food,

their families are growing, or they want money from charcoal. Oh, my God. So that's when we began our program to help the people take care of Takari. Wow. And that revelation was 1986. Yeah. It's so heartbreaking to hear about it and to talk about it. And I watched the documentary,

and it's so interesting that your husband, Hugo, before you became involved, that the way he was shooting, you can literally see him falling in love with you by the way he was shooting. Everybody says that. Really? Yeah.

It looks so, it's so beautiful and when you look back at those original crew of of the the original apes that you were studying because like coming away from it and watching it and and and knowing a little bit about you but not really putting it all together that you know the sort of fight that you had to engage in to, uh, to make your research, um, you know, valid to people that didn't want to believe we came from apes, you know, that was, you know, the way you changed the way we see humans, but like in, in your right now, what moments around that original bunch of apes do you sort of still wonder about? Because when I think about the two moments that I get hung up on that really dominate my mind and my heart are when Flint died of sadness and when the apes killed the other apes. Now, with Flint dying of sadness, why did that happen?

Well, it's just like a human child. I mean, he was over-dependent on his old mother. Probably in hindsight, she weaned him too early. It was earlier than infants are normally weaned. And then this last baby was born and Flint was jealous. That didn't come out in the film. Although if you watch it again, you'll see in one shot where Flint is throwing a tantrum and hitting his mother. You can see the baby.

Why on earth Brett didn't include that? I don't know because it was very silly. But anyway, so after the baby died, Flo took Flint back as though he was her lost child. Oh. She couldn't suckle him because she didn't have milk. She'd been very ill. But she let him ride on her back until she literally collapsed under him. She must have been close to 60, I think.

Oh, that's so, that's much more. Totally dependent on her. And then when he died, he couldn't cope. Right. Well, there was that turn that like when, so the real tragedy in that whole story outside of Flint dying is that the baby died and both Flo and Flint had an emotional problem with that. Yep. Yep. Huh.

Now, are there still generations from that original crew of apes now? Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. We're on to, I think, which we're on to grandchildren, and the first great-grandchildren, and Flo's lineage, every single male son, every son that she had rose up to the top position in the hierarchy and ruled for a while. And then his position was taken over by his brother. So she was an amazing matriarch. Well, that was the other interesting turn for me was that what was it? turn for me was that what was it because in in the documentary it sort of attaches the violence uh and the the sort of you know the the to the the separation of the two groups of apes was relative to flow's passing so what was it about the absence of that uh the matriarch that caused that no that

wasn't true oh that it wasn't it was i don't think it was anything to do with flow. It was simply that there were more adult males than we've seen since in a community. Oh. Five, six, seven. And this was 14. And the relationships got so tense with different males competing for dominance that I think that's why they decided to move apart. So like humans? Yes.

And then you see part of the smaller group that moved south, they were taking up a range that had been part of the whole community. So I think the real reason was, you know, the northern males, now they wanted to get back what they'd lost, and they were a bigger group with more males. We know now that these territorial battles aren't just related to that. They happen with all the communities. The horrible part about this one, it was like a civil war because they were killing individuals they'd slept with and played with and nested with. You know, it was horrible.

So it was interesting, though. Was I wrong in thinking that the documentary suggested that the death of Flo? Yeah, they did. They did. So you're not thrilled with the way they cut this thing? Well, mostly I think it was really good. There were just one or two places and you know they say oh artistic license and stuff but i didn't have a say in it well it's interesting

those are the two places that i found most provocative and wanted more answers for so when you first started to to realize that this was like the civil war and like you saw like you were getting some pushback and I don't know what the timeline is about your, the theory that, that we come from apes in a general sense. But when you started to realize that, that this is exactly human behavior, if not regulated by civilization and law and conscience, I mean, that must've been a hell of a week for you.

It was actually horrible. And it was in the early 70s. And you wouldn't know this, I'm sure, but there was the politics of science. It was this huge conflict between those people who thought a baby was born with an open slate and everything about their behavior was learned, and the other side that said, no, there are instincts at work. And, you know, clearly to me, yes, there were instincts at work. I mean, when people say humans aren't naturally violent, I mean, look around the world.

Can you honestly imagine anybody believing that we don't have some instinctive aggressive tendencies? Because we do. I mean, so I dared to say that. And it was I was kind of like blackballed, I suppose. But as I was just wanting to be in Gombe and learn, I didn't really care at the time. And do you like, this is an interesting example about the sort of resistance of a paradigm that, you know, was, you know, conclusive, but not based in fact,

which is something we're dealing with now, which is almost somehow revealing of, of a certain, you know, malignant instinct of animals that it's almost territorial, right? To say that this is the way it is, you know. So did you notice that, that they were acting like apes? Well, all I know is that when two male chimps are competing for dominance, they try not to fight because, you know, they can get hurt. So they have these big displays and they stick their fur out and they swagger from foot to foot, bunch their lips in a furious scowl, maybe throw a few rocks. Isn't that just like some human male politicians?

Yes, yes. There's no difference. Yeah, it just must have been sort of like, well, outside of what was it that finally sort of gave way for your research to take hold? I think because, you know, when I finally got to Cambridge, after I'd been about two years with the chimps, I was shocked and horrified because these professors, I was a bit nervous. Remember, I hadn't been to college and here I am doing a PhD. And I was told, oh, Jane, you shouldn't have given the chimps names. You should have numbered them. That's science. And you can't talk about them having personalities, minds capable of problem solving, and certainly not emotions.

Those are unique to us. In fact, it was stated that the difference between us and all other animals was one of kind. And of course, the first person to bring this evolution was Darwin. And he was treated with the same hostility. But we now know that we are descended from an ape-like, human-like common ancestor. Genetically, 98.7% of our DNA is the same as theirs.

What I thought was amazing was, I don't think I fully realized just how different they all look from each other. Yeah, that's the real personality. Yeah, yeah. And I just learned that from watching that documentary. Yeah. So I, you know, I continued to write about them as I knew was the truth. And then Hugo's film, the film, a lot of which you saw, that started going around. And then science gradually had to believe, but we didn't, I never confronted them. I didn't make a big battle out of it. I just quietly went on doing things my way. And I was really lucky in that my supervisor was one of the top three ethologists in Europe at the time.

And he was my sternest critic. You know, he was, oh, what am I going to do with this student I've been given? And she's writing all this awful stuff. But then he came to Gombe, and after two weeks there, he said that he'd learned more about animal behavior than in the rest of his life. He helped me to express myself in a scientific, logical way so that I would have a defense against all these other scientists who wanted to pull everything to pieces. So what was that trick? It was just a way of presenting the research?

It was a way of, well, first of all, logically thinking things through. Science at the time was saying you can't have empathy with your subject. And I was thinking, well, that's ridiculous. You need to have empathy because then very often you get an idea as to why they're behaving like that because we would behave like that in that situation. Then you can step back and be a scientist and say, well, now let me prove it. And that's what he helped me to do. So that was a complete kind of reconfiguration of how animal research could be done, to include empathy as part of the process.

Yep. It's astounding. So were they just watching animals in captivity mostly, or what were they doing? Yes. I mean, when I went out into the field, there were a little smattering of people doing field research. George Shaller with the gorillas, two professors in South Africa studying baboons. two professors in South Africa studying baboons. There was this woman studying giraffes, but mostly people were studying them in captivity. Which is like studying people in prison.

Yes. Yes, that's right. So they're not going to behave in any other way but sad and confined and angry, and they're not even registering that because they're not engaging empathy. So their research was almost worthless. Well, so, but anyway, my way of not confronting but telling stories, that worked. So there was no big hoo-ha. Yeah. But, you know, there's a horrible tendency now to go back to the hard science, and that's really unfortunate.

Like in what ways? Give me an example. I don't know that I can, but my students are coming out to Gombe now, and they come with a theory, and they've got to prove the theory. So if you're out to prove something, you tend to not observe consciously anything which goes against your theory because that's your PhD. Oh, so you try to hold the theory no matter what? Yes, I don't think it's done deliberately. But, you know, I know from experience, like, oh, I finally got an explanation for this strange behavior.

Phew, I finally understood. And then you see one behavior which absolutely contradicts your theory. How easy to pretend you didn't see it. Nobody else saw it. Right. Or that it was an anomaly. I couldn't do that. Yeah.

Because I want to get the truth. We are learning wonderful things about chimps. And certainly at Gombe, our study is carrying on. How's the population now? Well, it's hanging in there. It's dropped. But right now, because we've got this Tak takari program we've got a buffer zone all around the national park and protecting chimps from villagers and villagers from chimps and we've

managed to get the villagers to put land aside to make corridors so that our trap chimps can now interact with others outside which which increases genetic diversity. And actually, in the past couple of years, we've had, I think it's four females from outside come into the community. And that's very, very encouraging. And you say that some of the, I know in the book, there's talk about finding ways for these communities of humans to find ways to not deforestation or kill the animals. And that's starting to work out a little bit? Oh, absolutely. I mean, we started in 12 villages.

We're now in 104. What's the program called again? Takari, Take Care of Takari. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think one of the best things we introduced was microcredit based on Muhammad Yunus's Grameen Bank, so that particularly women can start their own small, environmentally sustainable businesses businesses and that's like having a tree nursery and selling the seedlings or keeping bees that's very popular those sort of things and we have our youth program roots and shoots in all the schools throughout this these 104 villages there are volunteers from the villages who learn how to use smartphones,

and they monitor the health of their village forest reserves, which is where most of Tanzanian chimps live, not protected. And they've now realized that protecting the environment isn't just for wildlife, it's for their own future. So they they become our partners. And that program is in six other African countries around Chimp Habitat. So that's amazing. So the hope is that the reward of that or the pride of that or seeing the results of that will encourage a continued commitment to it. Absolutely. And we provide scholarships, as many as we can, to keep girls in school, to give them a chance of secondary education. And it's been shown all around the

world that as women's education improves, family size tends to drop. And our family planning information, delivered, by the way, by local people, not us. And it's very well received because people, even in remote villages, have understood the way out of poverty is a good education. They can't afford to educate eight or 10 children. Well, I think what's interesting about what you just said there is that, you know, through practical and personal engagement with the environment that facilitates change that they can see, that you can see how it affects the future. And it seems that one of the big problems that we have in this country for different reasons

or in the industrialized world is this weird, you know, true inability to understand, you know, what we're doing to the future. Right? And this is supposedly intelligent people that we've, for different reasons, we've become so distracted through technology and through media that we're unable to, a lot of people are unable to just connect to the reality of how much damage we're doing. Yes. And also the fact that we actually, even if we live in the middle of a city, we are part of the natural world and we depend upon it. Clean air, clean water, food, shelter, everything.

Yeah. But what we depend on is healthy ecosystems. And when I was in the Gombe rainforest with that glorious forest ecosystem, I thought, well, all these life forms, every little plant and animal, they're all interrelated. They all have a role to play. Yeah. In what I think of as a beautiful tapestry of life. Yeah. And every time a species goes extinct,

it's like a thread is pulled from the tapestry. And in the end, it will hang in tatters. That means the ecosystem will collapse. And in the end, it will hang in tatters. That means the ecosystem will collapse. And that is happening. But, you know, that's why I concentrate so much on young people. Because they get it. Yeah. And

Roots & Shoots is now in over 65 countries. Well, that's great. Kindergarten members in university. Even we're getting the staff of big corporations to form Roots & Shoots groups. So it's like, you know, checking out in your company. Are you harming the environment and being like little watchdogs, really? Yeah.

I mean, and now this is like where I feel like I'm doing what Douglas did in the book, which is that, is it enough? Is it going to be enough, Jane? Well, we don't know, do we? No. If everybody tries to live in an ethical way, and some people make a much bigger difference than others, if you're high up the scale and you deliberately try to scale down to be more environmentally friendly. Then ordinary people, you know, they go to the supermarket and they ask about a product.

Was it made in an environmentally sustainable way? Did it harm the environment? Was it cruel to animals like these terrible factory farms? Is it cheap because of unfair wages or forced labor? If so, don't buy it. And that is having a major effect on how corporations do their business, consumer pleasure. sort of was jarring to me, but I understood it, is that when you and Hugo and your three-year-old son were in the Jeep and he's shooting, you know, those hyenas ripping apart that zebra. And, you know, it's just the way it is. And you're all just sitting there, you know, in my,

my, you know, there's part of me that thinks like, can't you stop it? But you don't. I know I hated it. You know, I'd gone beat the chimps hunt. And most of my students, that was the highlight of the day if they saw a hunt. I hated the hunts. Yeah. You know, I don't like that sort of thing. But it's nature. And it's very different from somebody who goes out proudly bragging, coming home with a head of an elephant, an endangered species, which he's shot.

Big guy I am. Photograph foot on elephant, foot on giraffe, foot on rhino. How can they do it? I don't know how they do it. I don't know what kind of people those are. I don't either. I mean, it's horrible to me. And that still goes on a lot?

Yes, it's horrible to me. And that still goes on a lot? Yes, it certainly does. It's lots of wealthy Americans, but it's not confined to Americans at all. And that sort of hobby or whatever, that murderous hobby alongside of what is, can you explain to me what the bushmeat business is? Well, the bushmeat, we've had for years and years, people living in the forest have done sustainable hunting. They kill just to eat. But the bushmeat trade, it's the commercial hunting. So instead of killing something to feed your family, you kill something to sell. Right.

And then you kill something else to get more money. And so your livelihood is now dependent on getting money from killing. Okay. So the bushmeat industry then, if you could call it that, was relative to the lack of other types of jobs in communities. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

So it's not some weird exotic pursuit of different flavored meats. It's literally desperation. Yeah, that's right. And then, of course, you've got the animal trafficking where you take live animals or kill them and get their body parts and you send them off to wildlife markets around the world, and you sell them for food or medicine, you sell them as pets. I just saw an undercover, well, I suppose it wasn't undercover, but anyway, it was filmed in a Belgian, Italian, one of the two. They have wildlife markets. And now we know that 75% of all new human diseases originate from contact with wild animals.

I give money to, there's a place in North Carolina called the North Carolina Tiger Rescue that actually rescues all these animals. Because apparently in the United States, you can buy one of these large cats you know isn't that awful yes you can buy a chimp and how is that you know how is that a good life for the chimp and also like you know what are you thinking because all these cats end up getting too big and and then they don't know what to do with them and they end up at this place it's a lovely place i think you know you go there and they're just they're just taking care of large cats that get bought as pets. Yep, I know. And there's ones for primates and ones for, there's also sanctuaries for

animals rescued from these factory farms. Yeah. That's a terrible, terrible life. Oh, it's just, are you a vegetarian? I've become a vegan. Oh, really? Is it better? A horrible treatment of dairy cows And chickens Egg laying chickens Yeah It's awful

And you know if you like meat Some of this meat substitute is so Like meat that I can't eat it Because I just hate the thought of eating meat Really? You can't even eat the fake meat? No I can't eat the fake meat because it tastes like meat. Oh, wow. How long have you been a vegan?

Oh, I've only been a real vegan since the pandemic because at home it's easier. On the road, I used to be 300 days a year on the road. So I was vegetarian forever, and I tried to be vegan. But, you know, you can't be going around and staying with people and be totally vegan unless you're very wealthy and you have your own plane, your own supplies. Yeah. Do you find that, do you feel like it's outside of mentally and spiritually shifted how you feel? Does it physically you feel a difference? Oh, physically you feel lighter.

how you feel. Does it physically you feel a difference? Oh, physically feel lighter. And also you feel, you know, if there's something that you really like, then you miss, then that makes you feel very good. Right, right. Because, you know, I'm suffering for a cause that makes you feel good. I like milk in my coffee, but I don't have it anymore. What do you use? Almond milk? No, I don't like that, you see. I don't use any milk. Oh, so you can't because it reminds you of milk milk. No, it's just because I don't like the flavors. The only one that's more or less flavorless is oat milk,

but they only sell it in huge containers, and nobody else in the family likes it, so it's a waste. Okay. You can't freeze it. So you just drink it black so i drink it black which is fine i'm getting used to it oh good uh i noticed it like they're in it also like just a a way of uh sort of figuring out where we're at now in in the documentary about when the when the polio epidemic hit the apes that was the the worst. It was worse than the war. Oh, it was terrible.

It looked terrible. And you weren't quite able to identify where it came from? Well, we were more or less. There was a big outbreak in the Kigoma, which is the town to the south. And two chimps were seen dragging limbs in the villages south of Gombe. So we assume that the doctor at the time, he was an Italian. And he was obviously no good. He had no, he refused to admit it was polio. He didn't get any vaccine. When mom and I arrived, he told us

there was no malaria. So we didn't have malaria medication. We, mom certainly very nearly died. Of malaria. You know, so there was no proof that what was going on in Kigoma, but the still people totally crippled. And obviously it was polio. Oh, you know, it doesn't, it just infuriates you when you, you know, you having lived through that stuff and now they just approved a vaccine for malaria, I think, yesterday. Yes. And, you know, polio has been eradicated, that there is this resistance to vaccine. I mean, it's just this celebration of stupidity. I can't.

It must be just daunting to somebody who has actually lived through those other epidemics. Yeah. How has it changed this pandemic we're living in now? How has that affected your outlook at all? No, it just, you know, it's just one more proof that all of these horrors like climate change and loss of biodiversity all stem from our disrespect of nature and animals. loss of biodiversity, all stem from our disrespect of nature and animals. You know, we disrespect animals and create situations which make it relatively easy for a virus to jump over from an animal to a person when it may create a new disease.

Yeah. Were you anticipating a global pandemic at all? Well, I wasn't thinking about it, but the scientists studying these zoonotic diseases, they've been predicting it for ages. Yeah. And when you go out on the road now, have you slowed down a little bit? Have you started to go out again or what's happening? I haven't yet. They won't let me. They say my age and the fact that I had really bad bronchitis and I still get a bit congested makes me high risk. And they won't let me because they say, we need you alive, Jane. We don't want you to get long COVID and have your brain damaged, please.

I'm hoping to be able to get back on the road carefully after Christmas, unless we get some horrible new mutation. But pray God we don't. Oh, my God. How are things in, you're outside of London? I'm in Bournemouth on the south coast. And how are things there in general? The lowest incidence of COVID. I mean, hardly anybody's died. We got the sea breeze coming in all day, you know. Oh, that's nice.

Yeah. So you go out in town there you're out in the world no i don't go in the town i just go we live there's a nice cliffs and small roads around and that's where i go every day i try and do at least 30 minutes well that's nice somehow yeah i yeah tell me about it but now like now after talking to you, I got to rethink my meat intake. That's that's what I'm going to take away from this. Oh, there's a couple of weird questions that I wanted to ask you. One, right before I talked to you, I realized that outside of the change that you facilitated in the way we see human behavior and the way that the world works. It was like I realized before I talked to you that I don't think the Planet of the Apes

movies would have happened without your research. No, well, we actually, you know, the second Planet of the Apes, the last one, we actually consulted on the chimp behavior, the ape behavior. You did? Like on the newer ones? I don't know. The one where it's Caesar andesar and he dies oh yeah so like who reached out to you the director the the uh they they wanted to know things their creative team

was consulting us on chimp behavior uh you know because they were all uh they were they were all uh electronic virtual i mean they weren't real chimps. Right. So they wanted to know facial expressions, movements? Yes. Yes. Oh, that's interesting. I think it was an absolutely brilliant film until they had to get all that stupid Hollywood drama at the end with spaceships coming in and gunning.

That spoiled it totally. So like the documentary, you know, it was good, but then something goes wrong. For story's sake. Yeah. The other question I have, which is odd, I told somebody I was talking to you, and they said, oh, you should ask her about Bigfoot. I'm always being asked about Bigfoot.

You are? Well, I'll tell you. Every country, every region of the world has its equivalent. There's the Yari in Australia, the wild man in China, the Yeti and the Bigfoot and Sasquatch. I've met people who swear that they've seen a strange creature. But the story that's the best story that I know was right in the heart of Ecuador. And we'd flown to these three small communities out in the rainforest. We flew over forest for two hours in this small plane to get there.

That's how remote, near the border with brazil and um so anyway we visited these three communities and i was trying to introduce roots and shoots there and i had a translator and they said i said well how do you communicate between these little community about 30 in each community bit size of a chimp community, actually. Oh, they said, we have a man who goes from one village community to another and takes the news and carries letters and, you know, bit like the old, we used to have people like that, didn't we, in the old, old, old days. Yeah.

So I said to the translator, all I said to him, I said, well, next time you meet one of these hunters who goes around, could you ask if they've seen a monkey without a tail? That's all I said. And he didn't know anything about Bigfoot, obviously. Three months later, I got a reply that three of these hunters immediately said, Oh, yes, we've seen monkeys without tails, and they're about six foot tall, and they walk upright. There you go.

So what do you make of that? Maybe, what do you make of that? Uh-huh. Maybe, what do you make of it? It sounds like humans to me. So you kind of believe that it's possible that there's these apes around? We're investigating. Anyway, these are hunters. Yeah. They're not going to think that a furry monkey, I mean, it's not like America where you have hoaxes and costumes.

This is in the middle of nowhere. Okay. There's no way a human would even contemplate dressing up as a big fox. They don't know about them. So, I mean, so it's possible that there are apes of this ilk all around the world, and there might be a few left. There might sort of perhaps remnant Neanderthal or something. Huh. Well,

maybe one. There's so many people now doing research and so convinced. And it is strange. There's no bodies found, no bones, no hair, no, no scat, but who knows?

I'm not going to say I don't believe it. I'm going to say, well, let's go on looking. Right. I mean, and obviously this is, you know, maybe a futile place to put one's hope, but it seems like there's a lot of people that hang a

lot of hope on this possibility. And yeah, I guess if you're going to use your hope in that way, because it makes your life interesting. Okay. Yeah. And you know, that Ecuador story, I mean, honestly, there's no explanation for it. Three different hunters. Yeah, but couldn't that be mythology in a way of the evolution of an idea? I mean, do we know the backstory? Because it seems like it's one of those stories that, you know, can kind of be passed around through villages. And this idea of it, not unlike here, it's almost a mythology.

Yeah, that's why somebody should go and investigate. I wanted to send someone, but we didn't have the money. Oh, you would have, huh? Yes, because I wanted to find out just the sort of questions you were asking. Well, maybe one day, Jane. When you think what we're discovering on the seabed now, deep, deep, deep down, all these new things. And then I was just talking to this amazing woman, Meg Lohman, known as Canopy Meg. She pioneered exploration of what she calls the eighth continent up in the canopy of the rainforest.

There are so many hundreds of new species up there that never come to the ground. Huh. Well, maybe when we save the world, we can do all this research. Well, we have to do the research quickly because some of it's vanishing. But the more we find out, the more amazing it is, the better chance we have of conservation. Like now she's made walkways in every major rainforest around the world. And ecotourism has taken off and people are going, giving the people an incentive and a way of making a living without cutting down the trees. Well, that's good. Now we just got to get rid of Bolsonaro and we'll be OK.

That's right. And a few others with him. Yeah. Well, it was great talking to you, Jane. It was a real honor. And I hope you had a nice time. I did have a lovely time talking to you. Take care. Bye.

That was amazing. The book is called The Book of Hope, A Survival Guide for Trying Times. I would say you should watch that documentary, too, about her life, Jane. It's streaming on disney plus now let's play some metal blues on the les paul with the tube screamer Thank you. so so boomer lives monkey and lafonda

cat angels everywhere man Boomer lives. Monkey and LaFonda. Cat angels everywhere, man. ¶¶ ¶¶ ¶¶ Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category,

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